The Mythical Frames stage—one of seven at the electronic dance music festival held in Atlanta in September—featured a colossal collage of tilted LED screens that each projected imagery throughout the performances. Brought in from Belgium, where the event’s sister festival has taken place since 2005, the stages each had their own unique theme, including a fairy-tale scene, an Arabian palace, and a magical forest. The United States version of the five-day festival was produced in partnership with SFX Entertainment.
Produced by Insomniac Events, the Electric Daisy Carnival is known for elaborate scenery, carnival rides, and world-renowned DJs. In 2013, Mountain Productions engineered the main stage for the tour’s Sin City stop, which was held at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in June. Able to withstand 90-miles-per-hour winds and constructed of 50 miles of scaffolding, it was the largest structure ever built by the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania-based staging company. The animatronic owl, provided by the Attraction Services Company of Santa Clarita, California, included a “nest” where the DJs performed.
“With JT at the helm as creative director for the show, we worked very closely on translating his vision of the 20/20 albums, which he described as ‘visual music,’ into a very sensory live experience,” says New York-based stage and scenic designer Josh Zangen, who drew inspiration from modern art, futuristic environments, electronic dance music visuals, and even a fly’s eye for the stage design. The largest and most technically challenging element of the production, Zangen says, was the bridge: a 120-foot-wide piece of the stage that extends out over the audience, 250 feet above their heads, to the opposite side of the arena. Developed with Tait Towers, a stage set supplier based in Lititz, Pennsylvania, the bridge allows Timberlake to “connect with as much of the audience as possible in a completely new way”—without wires or flown elements. The 20/20 Experience World Tour wrapped up in January.
"The LED Halo screen at Charity: Water's fund-raiser in San Francisco was unlike anything I've ever seen. It was custom-fabricated for the event to immerse 522 dinner guests into the daily life of residents of Ethiopia who need clean water. The 'halo' consisted of 40,000 pounds of LED wall, truss, lighting, audio equipment, and cables. The LED wall was provided by Global Trend Productions; working with Trademark Event Production, they designed a way to hang this circular wall using the frames of the LED tiles. The second, third, fourth, and fifth layers of LED tile were hung from custom-machined L-brackets to lighten the load. Elle Chan from Trademark said that they couldn't have built such a big wall without the custom fabrication. Throughout the event, the Halo displayed a 360-degree view of the daily walk that one resident of Ethiopia takes to procure water, plus live totalizers of the amount raised at the gala. (The totalizer was powered through an app custom-made for the event by All of It Now.)" —Robyn Hagan Cain, San Francisco contributing editor
